


Melting Point

by restlesslikeme



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, M/M, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 01:49:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4985332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/restlesslikeme/pseuds/restlesslikeme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before meta-humans and freeze rays, Leonard Snart is at the debut of his career in crime, fighting tooth and nail to establish himself from humble beginnings as the best in the game. Life has taught him that the only thing he can rely on is himself, and Len is more than happy to get what he wants alone -- until he meets Mick Rory. Down on his luck, tempestuous, and struggling to contain his own impulses, Mick is the complete opposite of everything Len has ever tried to be -- which might just make him exactly what Len needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Melting Point

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for a brief scene involving child abuse at the very beginning. 
> 
> Written for The Flash (CW) Big Bang 2015 and definitely not entirely canon-compliant.
> 
> [ [art link](http://shortterror.tumblr.com/post/131022712467/my-art-for-the-flash-big-bang-2015-heres-the) ] [ [art link](http://phynali.tumblr.com/post/131025633024/title-art-for-melting-point-an-amazing-fic-by) ] [ [art link](http://phynali.tumblr.com/post/131025471239/yeah-buddy-yeah-you-wont-regret-this-my) ]  
> Thank you to both my wonderful artists for your great work! I had a lot of fun doing this event with you guys!

 

 

 

There are drops of iron red on the dirty rug in the livingroom. If it can even be called that; livingroom implies that there are a variety of rooms with different uses. It’s a small trailer. There isn’t much, not even enough space for him to sneak through to his closet of a bedroom without being seen. That blood is old -- the beginning pulses of bruised flesh along the side of his jaw aren't.

 

“Someone kicks your ass out there, you think coming back here crying about it is gonna fix anything?”

 

Len keeps his eyes low, clenches his teeth. He tries not to flinch when the next blow catches the side of his head.

 

“That I’m gonna go fight your battles for you?”

 

He focuses on that stain in the fabric until it’s the only thing he can see. He should have known better -- should have thought this situation through. Should’ve wiped his tears away before he came in through the screen door. Stupid stupid stupid. He hates being stupid.

 

“No one in this world is going to give you a goddamn thing. Not me, not anybody else.” A hand fists in the front of his shirt, gives a rough shake until Len is forced to raise his chin. He’s immediately assaulted by the smell of alcohol, and he tries to turn away again. “ _Look_ at me when I’m talking to you.”

 

“First rule of business, kid, always protect yourself.”

 

Ten years old, with blood in the cracks of his teeth and his father’s inadequacies staining his skin, Len commits this to memory.

 

\--

 

He pulls his first job three years later, planning out a series of car robberies for a couple of older boys in the park. They’re both bigger than he is, and with a few years of petty crime under their belts, so Len doesn’t argue when they puff their chests and act in charge. He remembers his place. He studies, maps out the block they’re going to hit, times everything down to the minute, being sure to account for teenage stupidity.

 

It’s a good plan, very close to flawless, and they only get caught because his colleagues can’t keep their mouths shut about it afterwards.

 

His cut is hidden well enough that he avoids most of the heat. The cops and the park supervisor write off his involvement -- the other kids are older, and known for being trouble. When Len’s asked if he was bullied into participating, he doesn’t deny it.

 

They get their earnings confiscated and time in juvie. Len gets a black eye, a brand new walkman, and almost 200 bucks in cash.

 

He considers it a win.

 

\--

 

He’s twenty two the year he meets Mick.

 

He joins up to work a few jobs for some other small time wannabe kingpin, some guy who thinks he’s a big shot but can’t keep a steady crew. Most of his guys are young, but still older than Len -- early thirties, guys with alimony payments to make and parole officers to check in with, and the whole thing seems a little bit sad but he hasn’t found his footing yet so he’s testing the waters.

 

Mick Rory is twenty seven and twice Len’s size, big and solid. He carries a zippo around in his front pocket but Len’s never seen him light up a cigarette, just flick it on and off obsessively, like a nervous tick. He’s got dark hair cropped short and something a little too fast going on behind his eyes that makes you afraid to stand too close. He’s out of place here, though. He seems like he’s the only one of anyone else working for this guy that Leonard thinks could be raised up to something better.

 

“There’s somethin’ about you, isn’t there?”

 

Mick’s voice comes as a surprise, jolts him out of his head. Len’s not used to any of these people talking to him directly -- in fact he makes it a point that they don’t feel the need to. He keeps his head down. He cleans guns and does what he’s told, puts his time in and holds onto his cards. He listens and he takes notes and he thinks. There’s convenience in slipping under the radar; being called out sets him on the defensive.

 

“You’re gonna be runnin’ this by the end of the year. You’ve got a look about you,” Mick Rory grins, clicks his lighter, on and off on and off on and off, and stares at Len like he’s trying to solve a riddle.

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

“Sure you don’t,” Mick smiles wider. “That’s the kind of answer a smart guy like you’d give.” He taps his lighter to his temple thoughtfully. He hasn’t stopped staring at him.

 

Len raises his chin, meets Mick’s gaze with an icy stare of his own. It’s possible that he’s gotten sloppy, that Mick has noticed Len watching him, maybe that’s all this is. He didn’t strike him as the observant type: obviously a miscalculation on his part.

 

Len is used to being distrusted, he accepted a long time ago that that’s the vibe he gives out, and he can work with it. If Mick thinks that he has something to hold over his head, though, he has another thing coming -- Len is perfectly capable of holding his own. Slips like that can be dealt with.

 

For some reason that isn’t what this feels like. He doesn’t feel like Mick is threatening him.

 

Mick doesn’t look away, but his grin’s turned into something else, and the back of Len’s neck is starting to feel warm. Finally, after what feels like hours, Mick shrugs, releasing Len from the staredown. He tucks the lighter back into his breast pocket, patting his chest as if to verify it’s there while Len watches from the corner of his eye.

 

Later, when Len rehashes the scene in his head he tries not to think about how little of an excuse he has to dwell on the memory of Mick’s voice. He tries to focus on figuring out how Mick Rory fits into his plan.

 

\--

 

Sometimes, after a particularly grating day, Len takes an extra left on the drive home and ends up at the local rec center. It’s not the best part of town, so the parking lot is never more than half full and that’s generally only if there’s a kids basketball game or something going on. That isn’t what he’s interested in, isn’t why he’s here.

 

The air is frigid on his face when he walks in, and it chills his lungs as he sucks in a deep breath. The chlorine in the ice burns his nostrils. He’s always been comforted by that smell; clean, sharp. Familiar. Len smiles to himself as he raises his eyes, searching out across the rink in front of him until he finds his sister.

 

Lisa’s as graceful as ever, her blades slicing through the fresh ice like its nothing. She leaps and her dress flutters gold around her and for a moment, time slows. She’s a vision suspended mid-air, all beauty and discipline like a ballerina. Then her feet have landed again, and having spotted him, she glides her way over.

 

“Hi Lenny,” Lisa gathers her hair up ontop of her head and fastens it with an elastic from her wrist. Len does a quick scan at this distance while she’s distracted, checking for scrapes and bruises. She looks good, though. No traces of purple skin creeping out from under the shoulder of her jacket, no heavy foundation concealing anything around her eyes. Leonard feels a weight lift off his shoulders. Lisa has always had bad taste in men.

 

“You shouldn’t practice in that dress,” he tells her, though he smiles, placing his hands in the pockets of his coat. He thumbs idly over the stack of cash there, part of his pay for the week. “You should save it for when you’re showing off. You’re getting even better.”

 

Lisa sighs, rolls her eyes, smooths manicured hands down the front of her pretty gold skirt like she’s admiring it. It’s the nicest one she has, he knows that. Her prized possession. His money paid for all those sequins just as much as it paid for the skates laced up tight around her ankles. It had probably paid for the manicure, too, come to think of it.

 

“You want me to save it for the Olympics or something, Lenny,” she replies. “If I did that, I’d never get to wear it. Come here.”

 

He steps forward and she leans over the boards of the rink, wrapping her arms around his neck to give him a hug. It’s still comforting, and he puts an arm around her back to return the gesture. Lisa has always been more touchy than him -- their upbringing made her tough as nails, and smart the way he is; but while life had done a fairly thorough job of beating tactility out of Len, in Lisa it had stuck around defiantly. He’s proud of her for that.

 

“I just came to say hi,” he says. His tone is more apologetic than he’d originally intended but he means it. He’s missed her. “I know I’ve been working a lot lately, we haven’t seen much of each other.”

 

“Go home and get some sleep, Lenny,” Lisa says, pushing away from the boards to skate away from him, then scrunches up her nose as an afterthought. “And maybe a shower. You look fucking beat and you stink.”

 

Len tucks the money in his pocket into her gym bag on his way out.

 

\--

 

The first time it happens, Len doesn’t think much of it.

 

It’s nothing he’s working on; a product recovery type gig that a couple of the other guys get put on. Len hears about a rival storehouse going up in smoke, it doesn’t exactly ping his attention, even if it did cost them some money. Some idiot was supposed to do some scaring, he figures, and fucked up. Things happen. Things go wrong in a business like this, especially when the person running it is out of touch. Not his problem.

 

Until it happens again. And again.

 

And a fourth time.

 

Suddenly Len’s thinking about Mick Rory’s hands working that little silver lighter, about the glint of fire in Rory’s eyes and the twist in his smile. Suddenly everything’s starting to come together.

 

Len finds him in the back of a pub, a few pints deep and with soot under his nail beds. He slides into the chair across from Mick, grimacing slightly at the way his feet stick to the floor when he shifts his legs in. Mick’s been staring at him wildly ever since he came through the door, the fingers of one hand drumming anxiously, obnoxiously, on the tabletop. Len’s already noted the absence of silver in either hand, the lack of weight in his breast pocket. Mick could have switched up his hiding spot, but he doubts it. People are creatures of habit-- especially people like Mick Rory.

 

“Did you have a plan for when they finally get to you?” There’s no point in dancing around it. Len doesn’t bother to hide how closely he studies Mick’s reactions; he watches as Mick swallows thickly, as his fingers stop drumming to instead grip into the fake wood. The frown that creases his brow and turns at the corners of his lips seems more distressed than angry, though, which means Len was right about all of this.

 

“I didn’t want to do it,” Mick spits. “I didn’t plan for anything, I’m not a damn _arsonist_. I just--” he cuts himself off, sucking in a deep breath and then grabbing for his stein to take a drink. The condensation on the glass leaves his fingers wet, so he wipes them on his jeans. They’re trembling. “It doesn’t matter anyway.” he grunts, dragging a hand back across his head anxiously while Len looks on, stone faced. “Once the boss finds me I’m dead or worse. You know that as much as I do. You come to buy me one last drink?”

 

He wasn’t expecting Mick to be so self aware. It’s a good surprise, not a bad one, and Len folds his hands in front of himself on the table, leaning forward.

 

“I can help you,” Len says. For the first time since they set eyes on each other, he smiles a little bit. That seems to catch Mick’s attention. He puts down his glass, gropes at his breast pocket reflexively in search of that lighter and comes up short, confirming Len’s earlier suspicions. “You’re not an arsonist,” Len continues cooly. “You’ve just got a problem. A lot of people have problems.” He’s got him now, he can tell and it isn’t a lie. Mick’s obviously got some compulsion issues, but he’s also being wasted on a crew like this. If he could be put to better use; if he had something to focus in on --

 

He could be so much better. They could both be so much better.

 

“I’m in the market for a business partner. If you trust me, I promise I can give you another chance.”

 

Mick’s handshake is sweaty but firm.

 

\--

 

It takes a few days, but it’s easy enough for Len to get done. A few choice words, a planted book of matches, and suddenly no one has any reason to even mention Mick Rory and those fires in the same sentence. Someone else has to take the fall, but that’s how things go. Sacrifices have to be made.

 

Mick pulls Len into a store room, big rough hands gripping into the back of his jacket. His face is flushed, his jaw tight. He looks like he just ran a marathon.

 

“They just took Tommy out back,” he grunts, licking his lips nervously. The enclosed space is too small for Mick’s body. He takes up a lot of room anyways, let alone a closet like this. Len can feel his hot breath in his space, but Mick doesn’t seem to care. He rolls his neck, and his eyes search Len’s face. “That was you?”

 

The tone of his voice isn’t immediately readable. Len takes a moment, straightens his jacket back out from where Mick had disheveled it. He smooths his hands down, glancing up at Mick before he answers.

 

“I promised I’d get you out of it,” he replies simply, eyebrows raised slightly. “I keep my promises.”

 

He isn’t sure what to expect next; Len’s worried for half a second that Mick will suddenly develop a guilty conscience, in which case all of this will have been for nothing. Blame the initial draw on the fact that he’s been working too hard to get properly laid in ages and forget that he ever considered it could be something else. He needs someone loyal, someone who’ll trust him to see the bigger picture. He needs someone who can commit.

 

Fortunately, Mick goes the other way. Without warning, a grin breaks out across his face, and he exhales heavily. The smile the tugs at the corner of Len’s mouth is pleased -- he does love being right.

 

“Yeah, buddy.” Mick laughs, breathless and exalted. “Yeah. You won’t regret this.”

 

Len looks at him; big burly Mick with fire lining his bones, Mick with his cracked knuckles and five o’clock shadow and scalding heat in his eyes. Mick smiling down at Len like he’s a man saved.

 

He believes it.

 

\--

 

Leonard’s quiet when he needs to be; he understands when the situation calls for it. He understands that sometimes the best way to get what you want is to freeze yourself over so that no one can break you down before you get there.

 

Mick, on the other hand, has probably never laid low in his life. There’s nothing subdued about him.

 

He thinks it should bother him the way Mick paces around restlessly, the way he’s always switched to on. Len can’t make an offhand remark about some minor annoyance without Mick offering to handle it, his jaw twitching. Suddenly he’s a constant presence in Len’s life -- hovering close, making eyes at anyone who so much as looks at them sideways. It’s hard to miss Mick Rory, and now, by association, Len has been drawn out into the open as well.

 

No one steps to him, but it’s no longer because he’s slipping by unnoticed. Things are beginning to change -- now he has a presence. He didn’t think he’d like it as much as he does, but there’s something powerful in keeping his chin up. There’s something reassuring in the knowledge that Mick is always there behind him, waiting on a word.

 

He watches Mick patch himself up in the rearview mirror, touching his thumb to the edge of his bruised jaw. There’s a split in his lip but aside from that, he isn’t in too rough of shape. That old thing -- _you should see the other guy_ \-- comes to Len unbidden, and he shakes his head at himself. He did; all shades of red and purple when Mick was done with him, spitting blood and teeth out onto the pavement.

 

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” Len says passively, buckling his seatbelt while he waits for Mick to start the car. “Fly off the handle everytime someone opens their mouth.”

 

Mick stops touching at his face, pushing his tongue against his damaged lip for a moment before letting his eyes leave the mirror. He jams the key into the ignition and the engine starts with a rumble. He doesn’t shrug it off. Instead he says, “Was more than that. I can deal with people running their mouths. People are idiots.”

 

When they circle the block, the guy is only now being dragged up off the sidewalk by a few other men. Mick’s eyes flick to the side, watching as they pass, and Len smiles.

 

“It’s about respect.” Mick continues firmly. “I’m not just going to let someone disrespect you like that. You’re better.”

 

The conversation drops after that, and the rest of the drive back is spent in relative silence aside from the radio. Len watches the city pass out his window, but every now and then he sees Mick glance over at him in the reflection of the glass, as if he’s checking in.

 

\--

 

“You smell like gasoline, Lenny.”

 

Lisa looks at him quizzically, tilts her head. She’s bundled up in a sweatshirt that Len is pretty sure she stole from him and leggings, socks pulled up over her calves. It’s late August, but the trees are already starting to look kissed by October, the wind carries a fresh chill that lingers around the thin window panes of his apartment. If it were anyone else -- if it was about anything else -- he’d brush her off. Instead he can feel the smirk curling at the edges of his mouth.

 

His expression isn’t lost on his sister. She goes from flippant to invested in the span of a second, dropping down on the couch without breaking her line of sight. He’s never been good at hiding anything from her, not even when they were kids. Growing up the way they did robs a lot from a person, privacy being one of those things. Safety, being another. Getting a message across to her in just a glance had meant survival more than once.

 

“My new partner,” he gives as a reply, weighing his tone. Again, that smirk on the last word. _Partner._ He can’t help it, it flits across his expression before he even has time to think about it. “He’s got a thing for fire. The smell of it must have rubbed off on me.” Pun not intended, but it amuses him none the less.

 

“That’s not like you,” she remarks, tucking her hands up into her sleeves. “A _partner.”_ Lisa laughs, genuinely surprised, which is fair. Len’s never been much of a team player “Oh Lenny, he must be something else if you’re letting him run with you. You’re not replacing me, are you?” she pouts, then raises her eyebrows. “I can’t believe you’re out here taking _recruits_ and I’m still driving deliveries. God you’re a buzzkill.”

 

He shoves the side of her head playfully on his way towards the kitchen rather than answering, rolling his eyes when he hears her call out after him.

 

“You better look after him, whoever he is,” she says. “You’ll be hard pressed to find someone else willing to put up with all your talk.”

 

\--

 

A year later, Len has shut the whole operation down. The little profit they were turning he divides up between the petty criminals left on the roster as severance -- he doesn’t need them, and has no use for the money yet. What he’s left with is far more valuable to him: experience, underworld connections, a base of operations, the foundations of a career. The foundations of a new life.

 

And Mick. He has Mick, too.

 

“So what do we do now?” Mick is restless as ever, but it’s a different kind. Excitement comes off him in sparks rather than anger. When Len meets his gaze, there’s a brightness to his eyes he doesn’t think he’s seen before. The sentiment is mutual, and Len can’t help the smile that quirks at the corner of his mouth.

 

“Now the real work begins,” Len replies. “Partner.”

 

\--

 

They have a few safehouses scattered around the city, and one in the next town over for if they ever need to get away. The main is a warehouse leftover from the old crew. It was barely used for more than storage back then, but it suits Len’s purposes fine, and Mick seems to agree. For almost the first six months after they start working together, he isn’t even entirely sure if Mick has a home -- they both have little pieces of themselves strewn around the place but Mick settles in like it was made for him and Len doesn’t pry.

 

He watches, though, it’s hard not to.

 

Mick’s taken over a back corner of the place, covered it in bits and pieces of things that Len has no idea where he’s picked up. Car parts and busted appliances. A few guns. He’s got a dented toolbox that sits on the edge of his work desk, and more often than not Len will hear him rummaging through it while he preps for a job. It becomes soothing -- the quiet metallic clang filling the air with something other than silence but less distracting than idle chatter.

 

Hunched over the wide steel table, hands covered in grease and dirt, Mick is steadier than Len has ever seen him. He tries to tell himself that this is why it’s so hard to stop stealing glances from the corner of his eye. He’s not used to this calm, level man, quietly focused on whatever it is he’s tinkering with -- it’s a new side to take in. A new piece of him to consider.

 

Len could almost convince himself of it, if he were less self aware.

 

In reality there’s no excuse for how his eyes linger over the muscles in Mick’s back, the strong breadth of his shoulders. There’s no excuse for way his mouth goes dry when Mick makes a quiet hum in the back of his throat, brow furrowing slightly as he disassembles the piece in his hands.

 

Mick’s touches are always so brief; he reaches and then withdraws, as if he’s unsure of his boundaries. He doesn’t want to lose this, Len knows. Mick is aware, too, aware of his own tendencies to overstep and lose his hold on the stable things in his life. This, their work together, this trust between them, is a stable thing in Mick’s life.

 

Len should be pleased that he’s willing to work for it, to restrain himself when need be.

 

Instead, seeing Mick wet chapped lips with his tongue, so steadily attentive to the work on his table, is beginning to feel more and more like an aching heat in his veins.

 

\--

 

Lisa applies her lipstick in the mirror, fire engine red, and runs her fingers through her hair. Her makeup is set out neatly on the counter in front of her: bottles and tubes and pallets all spread out for use. Behind her, Len digs through her dresser drawers, determined to find the pair of black jeans she promised to lend him three weeks ago. He shuffles through torn denim, smooth leather (more leather than anyone needs, really), brow creased as he comes up unsuccessfully every time. He looks up when he hears the click of her lipstick lid.

 

“My rent dropped $300, Lenny,” she mentions casually, touching her finger to her lips to see if the color stays and looking back at him in the reflection with her cat’s gaze. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

 

She’s always been insistent about paying her own bills.

 

Len makes himself busy searching for the pants again, shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly. He tries not to smile thinking about Mick’s hands fisted in her landlord’s tacky rayon shirt, about how good it had felt to be good at his job. Finally, he spots black fabric bunched into the corner of the drawer, and he pulls it out triumphantly.

 

“Not a thing, sis,” he answers, smiling at the way she narrows her eyes. He holds the pants up to his hips.“Hey, you think these will get me laid?”

 

\--

 

He kisses Mick first.

 

It’s a surprise to him, for more than one reason. Mick, without his inhibitions, Mick who follows his heart and his gut more than he’s ever followed his head, Mick who likes to play with fire even at the risk of danger, Mick who for all intents and purposes should have been the one to make the first move.

 

Then again, just meeting Mick has changed the way Len works, so maybe it isn’t all that surprising after all.

 

Mick’s broader than he is, all solid muscle and rough skin. He’s hot to the touch, like he’s perpetually running a fever, and he shivers when Len first puts his hands on him, even hesitates for a fraction of a second before he responds. Maybe he wants to savor it. Maybe it takes them both by surprise. It doesn’t seem to matter when Mick groans under his touch, when his fingers close over Len’s hips and push, pinning him back against the wall of the warehouse where they’re staked out. He’s taller than Len is, his presence is more commanding in general, but he seems desperate in a way that’s pleasantly contradictory to his appearance. His breath comes quick and he keeps gasping every time Len pushes in closer or readjusts his angle.

 

“God I’ve been thinking about this,” Len says, the words getting half lost somewhere in the fray, tangled up between their tongues, swallowed up by Mick’s greedy mouth. _Thinking_. He’s always thinking but it’s been harder lately, harder with Mick’s gaze hot on the back of his neck, with how hyperaware he’s been of Mick’s presence. He feels drawn to him, connected, and it’s been getting harder and harder to ignore. His words obviously resonate enough regardless; Mick hitches his knee up between Len’s thighs, moves his hands up to push under his shirt over Len’s stomach and chest. “Fuck, _Mick_.”

 

“Right here,” Mick says, his voice low and heavy, his mouth moving over Len’s throat with purpose. Len can’t resist, not right now, not like this, and he drops his head back, relishing the pang of danger that comes along with it -- his mind attempting to alert him of the potential threat. “Yes,” he answers, breathless, and pushes his fingers under the waistband of Mick’s pants. The gesture earns him a grunt of approval, and Mick’s hips roll forward towards him.

 

When Len finally touches him, Mick’s groan sounds like a mixture of need and relief all at once. Len slips under layers of clothing and squeezes down -- skin on skin -- and he’s rewarded with Mick thrusting forward against him. It’s good -- better than -- but he’s struck with the very likely realization that now that they’ve come this close, Mick will likely be very reluctant lose even an inch of their tight proximity.

 

Mick’s breath is ragged and loud against Len’s neck, so hot that Len could see him breathing smoke. Next to shaking breaths and drawn out groans, Len makes smaller sounds: a contented hum under his breath or a sigh on his exhales. He’s granted the advantage here: Mick is the one in his palm, too overcome to do much more than grasp tight fistfuls of Len’s clothes and shake against him.

 

Which is all very well. It gives Len time to work; to listen to what level of pressure makes Mick’s breathing hitch, or what pace makes his limbs tremble. Len grins, just in the corner of his mouth, and he drags his thumb over the head of Mick’s cock.

 

“Snart,” Mick groans quietly, more urging than asking. He shifts, heavy boots planting firmer and further apart and he rocks up towards Len’s hand.

 

"Yes," Len replies, agreeing to demands left unspoken. He moves his hand faster, giving a lingering squeeze to the base, and Mick suddenly is past the point of endurance.

 

His hands move with a sudden purpose. Mick pulls at Len’s jeans, roughly gripping at his zipper. Pliantly -- eagerly -- Len arches his himself forward, letting Mick shove his pants down off his hips. Len does his share as well: freeing Mick from beneath loose layers of clothing, and from there Mick asserts control. Len doesn't fight, gasping out a sharp exhale when Mick spits into his palm and reaches between their bodies, surrounding them both in one big hand and squeezing down.

 

"Like that?" Mick asks and Len hums in unsteady approval. It's hard to place the rough quality of Mick's voice; he isn't goading or taunting, nor is he asking to seek praise. He's genuine about it: he asks for Len’s sake and not his own.

 

It's reassuring in a way. So is how he can be pressed back against the wall, solid concentrate at his back and Mick's huge, imposing posture at his front, and not feel caged. It feels secure instead. If anything, Mick's intent doesn't even seem set on dominance or pinning him down. He only presses in so tight because he can't seem to get close enough. Slowly, Len circles his fingers around Mick's wrist, guiding without controlling, and Mick attentively follows his lead. Len falls into a rhythm with him, hips rolling up with every down stroke of Mick's tight grip. Len sighs and Mick shudders.

 

Chapped lips press to Len’s temple and Mick moves his hand in firm, steady strokes. "Always feel so good," Mick is idly murmuring, burning and utterly sincere. The words have the rough edge of something that's been contained for far too long: like stone sharpening under pressure.

 

Len moves his free hand to cup the back of Mick’s neck, his thumb rubbing at the base of his skull. Using the grip to pull him close, he kisses Mick again. Tongue and teeth answer his invitation, the pressure sharp but never harsh enough to break skin. It’s that careful sort of balance: want so intense that it begs for force, but also the desperation that stalls the urge before it gets too far. Restraint for fear of breaking what he’s waited so long to get his hands on.

 

It shows in other ways: how Mick’s body jerks, shudders and stops. He’s trying to keep himself contained, and that is the last thing Len wants from him here. His grip slides down from Mick’s wrist, covering his hand with his own and squeezing. Groaning, Mick’s entire body seems to buckle and Len breaks the kiss to murmur against damp lips.

 

“Come on,” he coaxes lowly. He urges Mick’s touch down a little harder, a little faster. Mick tries to say something, but he seems to choke on it. Dropping his head to Len’s shoulder, he pants and bucks his hips in a rhythm that grows more and more unsteady.

 

Mick fists his free hand into Len’s shirt, twists and pulls, and when he finally comes he buries his moan into Len’s throat. The vibration of it rumbles against his chest, and Len braces his arm around Mick’s towering body as he shudders and bucks against him.

 

For several long seconds, Mick struggles to steady his breaths. Len gives him space, withdrawing his touch to find his fingers sticky and stained. He waits, indulgently, until Mick regains enough of his wits to raise his head again. When he knows Mick’s eyes are on him, he lifts his hand up, and licks the mess from his fingers one by one.

 

Len isn’t sure what he expects, but the immediate reaction that he earns is far more drastic. Mick snatches his wrist, clearing his hand out of the way so he can practically crush their mouths together. Pushing his tongue deep, it’s like he’s trying to drink Len down, chasing the taste of himself in Len’s lips. Len moans, meaning to reciprocate, but then there’s empty air. Mick’s suddenly on his knees, and Len barely has time to realize what’s happening before he feels Mick’s tongue drag along his cock.

 

“Ah,” slips from Len’s mouth, softer than he intends, before he can bite it down. His head tips back against the wall and his hands cup the back of Mick’s head. Shaved skin gives him nothing to bury his fingers into, and nothing he can grab hold of and pull; there’s just the satisfying prickle of stubble on his palms and the heat of Mick’s mouth on his skin.

 

Mick is slow about it, more thorough than teasing, and Len is short of breath with his hips rolling. The release of his own orgasm has left Mick with the infinite patience to lick up the length of him, base to tip, over and over. It’s dizzying, and Len drags blunt nails over Mick’s scalp, trying to coax him closer. “Mick,” he manages faintly, like a request, and Mick groans, letting the vibration of his voice tease against Len’s skin.

 

“Mick,” he repeats as Mick parts his lips around his head of his cock. Len arches forward, presses in, and the second sigh of his name is a mixture of want and relief. “Mick...”

 

Mick braces big hands on Len’s hips, steadying without restraining. He starts slow, and this time it seems more purposeful than teasing. Mick appears tentative about actually taking Len into his mouth, and with that comes the conclusion that Mick hasn’t done this much -- if at all. Still this is his instinct: he wants to reciprocate, so he kneels in front of Len, eager and willing despite being unfamiliar. Mick pushes a boundary, steps past a comfort in effort to please him, and the weight of that gesture more than compensates for any grace that might be lost from inexperience.

 

Mick takes him in halfway, curls his lips over his teeth and sucks hard, leaving Len unsteady. Courtesy urges him not to move too much; he doesn’t want Mick drowning when he’s already giving so much, but keeping still is surprisingly hard to muster. It should feel disorienting; loss of control has never served Len well -- but here, with Mick, there’s a security that surpasses the instinctive need to reassert himself. Letting the reigns slip from his hands feels freeing, rather than caging, and Len’s next breath out is a shuddering groan as he lets his eyes drift shut.

 

All it takes is Mick slowly edging up all the way, testing his tolerance until he has Len all the way to the back of his throat, and Len lets himself give in. Big hands on his hips hold him steady as he shakes, curses, and hooks his fingers into tight fistfuls of Mick’s suspenders. Len bites down, strangling the sound in his throat, and he feels heat boil up from his abdomen. The sensation burns hard, sticking stubbornly long before dulling down like a pleasant ache in the pit of his stomach. Mick lingers too, swallows, and hums too happily before pulling back.

 

Len’s eyes flutter open as he comes back to himself , and he cups Mick’s grinning face in his hand. He’s happy, and genuinely so, rather than smugly pleased. When Mick speaks to him, his voice sounds dizzy and delirious; too drunk off of his own delight. “So hot,” he praises thickly, and Len can’t stop himself from laughing.

 

He doesn’t mean to; it’s not intended as mocking and he isn’t sure if Mick knows it. Mick curses, more riled than self conscious, and Len is shoved back with newfound enthusiasm.

 

\--

 

“It keeps my hands busy,” Mick tells him once, having downed one beer too many after a successful job. He picks up a radio from his work table -- once mangled, now repaired -- and turns it over in his palm. “Fixing up old things.”

 

Len’s a little drunk too, not too much, just enough that when they came in together he asked about it. His body feels warm, like there’s a fire in his belly. Is that how Mick feels all the time?

 

“Most of this stuff’s been thrown away anyways, there’s nothing to lose if I tinker with it. If I can make it useful again, well.” he hums and trails off, sets the radio back down. Len feels unsteady with the silence, suddenly. He can tell that Mick is thinking, that he might be biting back words and it feels unbearable. Len reaches out to lay his hand flat against Mick’s chest.

 

Warm.

 

“Feels good to have something good to do with my hands,” Mick looks at him from the corner of his eye, tongues at the inside of his lip before he resumes finally. “That I can put something back together instead of having it fall apart every once in a while.”

 

\--

 

He washes soot from Mick’s palms, draws cold water over his blisters, kisses his temple with a tenderness he didn’t know he possessed. Somewhere in the city, a fire is burning.

 

“I had to do it --” Mick mumbles, shoulders shaking. “I had to.” He quiets when Len hushes him.

 

Len strips him down carefully, fingers moving over warm skin, slipping under fabric that smells like smoke. Mick allows him this; lets Len pull his shirt over his head, lets him work his pants off of his hips. He’s clammy to the touch, quiet and exhausted in a way that he rarely is, his head bowed.

 

“Come on, Mick.”

 

With an arm around his waist, Len leads him to bed. The sheet he pulls over his body is thin cotton, and cool to the touch. Once Mick’s head is on the pillow, Len undresses himself, leaving his clothes in a pool on the scratched hardwood before he climbs in next to him. For a moment, he just looks at him. Their faces are close, foreheads nearly touching, and at this distance Len can see the shine of fear lingering in Mick’s eyes, the panic that always seems to set in once he’s away from the flame and realizes what he’s done. He doesn’t meet Len’s gaze, eyes low, throat working as if he’s trying to keep from being sick.

 

Len lays a hand over his chest.

 

“Mick,” his voice is soft, rather than reprimanding. Mick’s heart races under his fingertips, and Len realizes that his own is doing the same, matching that kicked up pace for a different reason. Outside the window, in the distance, a siren wails. “Mick.”

 

This time, when Mick leans forward, it’s tentative. There’s none of the scorching desperation that usually colors these encounters between them, nothing frantic or sharp around the edges. Instead, Mick licks gently at his bottom lip, asking rather than taking, and waits until Len opens his mouth to deepen it. He smells like a wreckage -- gasoline, peeling paint, exhaust and smouldering wood -- and Len breathes it in. He lets it fill him up and settle on his skin like dust, and when Mick sighs around his tongue, Len takes his hand and places it on his own hip. He withdraws from the kiss only slightly, just enough that his words aren’t lost.

 

“You’re here with me,” he murmurs, raising his arm to run his knuckles back against Mick’s shaved head. It prickles, soft and pleasant against his skin. “I promised you another chance.” Mick’s thumb pulls steady lines against his hip, over and over like he’s flicking a lighter. Len touches their foreheads together.

 

“Together,” he says. “You and I, Mick. I promise.”

 

\--

 

Mick’s vibrating in the back of the cruiser next to him, his hands cuffed behind his back. His arms keep flexing and every time a car passes, Len gets a quick glance at his jaw clenched tight in the yellow of the headlights. Len, next to him, is determined not to give anybody that kind of satisfaction. He’s too stubborn and besides, he’s trying to work out their next move in his head, trying to figure out what comes next. Mick isn’t half that clever. He doesn’t know how to rely on his head, he feels everything tenfold and it makes it difficult for him to step back and look at things rationally. Len likes that about him, as a partner and as a person, it lends them a sense of balance. Mick’s quick temper can get in the way but it’s also a tool.

 

“Stop squirming around so much,” Len tells him quietly. Mick snorts, his harsh features scrunching up. From this angle Len can see the bend in his nose where it’s been broken a few times. “You only have yourself to blame for us being here, if you had just listened to me instead of getting carried away we wouldn’t have had this problem” He keeps his voice down, low and even. He’s still small, and younger than Mick by a good five years, but he’s hard as ice. He’s sharp even when he doesn’t mean to be.

 

“If you’ve got such a fucking problem with how I run, maybe you shouldn’t have brought me along.” Mick snarls, and Len let’s a sigh escape his lips. He’s ready with a reply but changes his mind after glancing at the officers in front of them. Mick’s radiating heat next to him; one wrong word means a full blown argument. As much as he loves being right, it isn’t worth getting capped in the back of a cop car because Mick couldn’t keep his cool.

 

“You know that I wouldn’t leave you behind,” is what he does end up saying instead, and something in his voice must take Mick by surprise because he grunts, turning to look at Len rather than stare out the window as he had been doing.

 

As soon as he does, Len makes his move. He strains against the cuffs, pushing himself away from the leather seat and up towards Mick to press their mouths together. The response is as much a force of nature as he was expecting: Mick is immediately shoving into his space, oblivious to their surroundings, all heat and emotion and aggressive  _want_. If they were home Mick would have hands all over him, as it stands, with his hands unavailable he seems to be trying to overcompensate. He bites down on Len’s lower lip, maybe a little too hard, licks into his mouth when Len lets out a quiet gasp as a result, trying his very best to crowd their bodies together.

 

Len can hear the raised voices of the officers in front of them, feels the vibration in his teeth as one of them smashes their baton against the caged divider, but it’s no use -- Mick’s got his claws in, figuratively. They have no other choice but to let the two of them be or to pull over the car, and ego wins out in the end. Len is listening to everything going on around them even with the cuffs biting into his wrists, even when Mick groans against his mouth, tempting him towards distraction.

 

As soon as he hears the click of the door, Len is twisting his body around, bracing his feet and pushing out as hard as he can. It catches the officer on the other side by surprise, as he’d hoped, and Mick, sensing him pulling away, follows his lead, also as he’d hoped, and from the corner of his eye he catches the other cop get an elbow to the side of the head. Mick’s laughing, surprised and almost gleeful, the sound of it echoing against the pavement of the abandoned street and mixing with the sound of the officers struggling to pick themselves up off the ground.

 

By the time they hear shots ring out, they’re already around the corner, hands still held behind their backs.

 

“Always with a plan, Snart.” The look Mick shoots him is part admiration part something else, hotter and deeper, that leaves Len with a feeling in the pit of his stomach that he can’t shake. He matches the look on Mick’s face with a grin of his own, lets it take over his face, lets the feeling spread from his stomach to his chest and right down to his fingertips and for once he isn’t thinking about it. Not too hard. Not right now.

 

\--

 

“I know you don’t care much for driving.”

 

Mick is moving with a strange sort of purpose as he drags the garage door open, big arms flexing with the strain of it. Len can read him well enough -- he has an endgame but he’s trying to appear as though he doesn’t. He’s feigning casualness as he steps in and flicks the power box on. The overhead lights come to life one by one with a pop of electricity; Len’s been watching Mick curiously since he came to collect him from Lisa’s apartment a little while ago, and he sees his eyes dart to the back corner of the garage now. His workspace, covered in the same dirty drop sheet that it usually is.

 

“That’s why I have you to chauffeur me around,” Len replies easily, raising his eyebrows. “What is it, Mick.”

 

Mick doesn’t answer him immediately. Instead, he makes his way back to the corner of the room, idly running a hand back over his own shaved head.

 

“You’re being unusually secretive.”

 

Len gets a huff of a laugh in return, almost a grunt, and Mick shakes his head.

 

“Not secretive, you’re just impatient,” he replies, and he pulls away the sheet.

 

The bike is beautiful. It has to be an older model, from the way it’s put together -- there’s no fancy tech cluttering up the steering, everything sturdy looking and streamlined. Nothing excessive. Everything in its place. There isn’t a square inch of rust on it though. The whole vehicle shines as if it just came off the assembly line, glossy black paint catching in the light.

 

“Now I don’t have to drive you anywhere,” Mick says.

 

Len is speechless for a moment, a rare occurrence. With nothing to gain from it, this was for him. Mick did this for him.

 

“You built this?” he says finally.

 

Mick gives a small nod of his head, crossing his arms defensively across his chest. Len turns thirty in a few days -- they both know this, but neither of them have ever been big on gestures. It’s easier to leave things unspoken and unnamed, to communicate through hungry touches and bruised hips. This feels like a gesture.

 

“From the frame up,” Mick shrugs. “Replaced what needed replacing. Saved what I could. It runs great now, I’ve tested it. It’ll last you if you look after it. Give you a quicker getaway than those cars we’ve been using.”

 

Mindfully, Len takes a step forward to reach out and touch it. The metal is cool and smooth under his hand -- it’s cleaner than anything else he’s ever seen Mick tinker with. The time and effort that went into reconstructing it is obvious in how seamlessly beautiful it is. He runs his fingers over the seat; brand new leather, and looks back to see Mick watching him.

 

\--

 

Len is supposed to be the man with the plan. He’s supposed to have seen this coming. It’s what he’s supposed to do, what he prides himself on. There’s a plan for every scenario, a path to follow no matter what, a means to any end. He can hear Mick laughing, over the roar of the flames, over the sound of wood crackling and splitting in the heat. With the smoke filling up his lungs and the blistering heat licking at his face, it’s the only thing he can think -- _I should have seen this coming. I should have planned for this.There has to be an out. I should have I should have I should hav_ e --

 

There is no out. He can’t even hear himself think over the screaming in his brain, the mental sirens going off that block out anything rational, over Mick, Mick howling like he’s come undone, Mick’s voice melting into the noise of the chaos until Len has trouble telling the difference.

 

“Mick!” He bellows. His chest feels raw, his mouth dry from screaming Mick’s name. Len can’t remember feeling like this before, so fucking terrified and _helpless_ , so utterly lost without anything to fall back on. He’s not going to leave him here to die. Not now, not after everything. The smoke is burning his throat, twisting into his lungs and he can’t clear them. His eyes feel heavy. Frantically and panicked he tries forward, covering his mouth and nose with his forearm, fighting off the exhaustion crushing his limbs.

 

_I should have I should have I should have_

 

“Mick!”

 

Len catches a glimpse of him, briefly, a few yards away. Mick is a silhouette, a big dark spot in the middle of the fire, the only real thing Len can zero in on even as his eyes are stinging. Mick’s on his knees, his mouth open wide, his face twisted in some gruesome, unnamed emotion. Len can’t tell from here if he’s laughing or if he’s screaming, but maybe Mick doesn’t know either. Len tries to shout his name one more time and his voice finally fails him, choked away by the flames and the black inescapable smoke. Then there’s a snapping, a groan as the roof above him splinters and gives in, and Mick is gone.

 

He doesn’t know how he makes it out, only that he does. Animal instinct takes over. The grass under his face is cool against his burned cheek, the blades sticking to his blistering skin. He keeps his eyes closed, breathes in air that still feels heavy but less oppressive, ignores the tears leaking down over his nose into the dirt and the metallic taste of blood under his tongue.

 

It could be minutes or it could be hours before he hears sirens in the distance. Alone, he drags himself up out of the dirt. Alone, he makes himself scarce.

 

\--

 

Leonard Snart can take a hit like no other. Even when he was a kid; he wasn’t very big, or very strong, usually sporting a black eye from home-- like blood in the water in an ocean full of sharks. As much as he tried to keep his smart mouth shut but it did little to help, and fighting back had never gotten him anywhere. He quickly learned that didn’t matter how well you could land a punch when the person with their hand around your throat was twice your size.

 

Losing Mick feels a lot like that.

 

Len doesn’t cry. He doesn’t lock himself up away from the world. After weeks without a word or a trace of Mick, he takes out a spot in the obituaries -- nothing excessive, just a few lines that would be meaningless to anyone else.

 

 **RORY. M.** _Burned too bright._

 

Mick had no other family; had nothing, really except for this life Len had helped him find. Anything before that had been suffocated in the smoke he carried with him wherever he went. Making a gesture, however small, seems like the right thing to do.

 

They were partners, after all.

 

\--

 

Len wakes from a nightmare that smells like exhaust and burning flesh, and tastes like bloodstained carpet. His hands are shaking when he sits up in his empty bed, freezing cold all over, and he takes a deep breath to try and steady his racing pulse. His brain is still operating on as he tries to grasp the last threads of his nightmare. It’s too far gone -- there’s nothing intelligible left.

 

There’s a pale orange glow coming through the curtains; the change in lighting probably being what woke him. When he makes his way to the window, feet quiet on the cold floor, he can see that light reflecting and flickering against the glass. The sight of it makes his throat feel dry all over again and it’s a struggle not to touch his fingers to the window. Instead, he occupies his hands by reaching for the clock radio next to his bed.

 

The breaking report is already calling it arson, warning people to stay clear of the area. The police have even issued a description of the suspect but Len isn’t there to hear the end of it. By the time the newscast is wrapping up, he’s already revving up the bike.

 

\--

 

“You finally came lookin’, huh.”

 

It’s spoken with less hostility than he probably deserves. Mick’s voice is gruff-- deep and forceful. There’s just the trace of a lilt on certain words that Len is always drawn to. Tonight it seems louder than Len remembers it, but it’s still familiar. He’s spent enough years listening to Mick to be able to tell how he’s feeling; if he was struck blind tomorrow he’d still be able to read Mick like a book just from the cadence of his voice. At least, he thinks so. He hopes he still could. It’s been a long time, so maybe things have changed.

 

Len doesn’t answer for a moment. It could have been a mistake, coming here after everything that’s happened.

 

Mick’s fingers are callused, shiny and red from where he’s burned the skin off. He’s raw from his neck down his arm and the scarring disappears under his shirt. Len’s watched him do tricks with a book of matches, or with his dirty little steel lighter. He’s got a way that he can flick them between his knuckles like a coin, letting the flame lick at his flesh. Mick’s a big, rough guy. He’s got big, rough hands. Len’s been feeling the ghost of them on his hips for a long time.

 

“If you’ve got something to say, you better get it off your chest,” Mick growls, as if Len is pushing his luck, pressing on his time here. Mick’s body language says otherwise -- leaned in, palms resting open on the table, licking his lips -- but maybe after a year Len owes him the respect of his act.

 

“You didn’t make yourself easy to find,” Len replies finally. He’s rewarded with a harsh scoff.

 

“We both know you could have figured it out. ”

 

The words sting unexpectedly, his stomach drops. _I thought you were dead,_ Len thinks. _I didn’t know there was anything to look for._ It still tastes bitter and painful, a wound that hasn’t quite closed over yet, and the fact that Mick believes he’d abandon him -- that after everything he thinks so little of him -- Len bites his tongue around the thought and shakes his head instead, gripping and ungripping his hands as he tries to figure out what he came here to say. Mick finds his voice first.

 

“I’m better now than I was before,” he grunts, turning his head to examine the flayed skin of his own shoulder. “More myself. The fire brought that out; peeled everything away and showed me who I really am.” The smile he flashes up at Len looks too much like the last time he saw him -- too wide, too focused on something only he can see, too hot. Like he’s burning.

 

“I’m ready to go back to work --” he starts.

 

“No.” Len cuts him short, the words escaping him before they’ve even fully formed in his head. “No, you’re not.”

 

When he found out that Mick had survived -- that he was out there by himself, laying low -- some part of him had hoped, selfishly, that the accident may have grounded him. It’s been more than a decade of this; of Mick and his cycle of ash, of being the only thing keeping him from burning up himself. Until he’d failed. He had thought that it would finally be too much, but instead it seems to have made things worse.

 

“You’re a liability, Mick, not an asset,” His tone is stark, cutting. “You need help.”

 

Mick scoffs, pushes his body away from the table roughly and turns, but Len remains still. He won’t be intimidated. He won’t be swayed, either, regardless of how much he may want Mick by his side again. He’s worked too long and too hard for this to have it all fall apart because of an emotional call.

 

“You’re sick,” Len continues; it’s just a statement of fact, but from the way Mick’s ears go red he obviously takes it as a critique. “You’re not coming back on with me. We’re finished.”

 

“You knew what I was from the beginning,” Mick spits, turning back on him like some kind of big caged animal. His hands are trembling. “I never pretended to be anything else -- you knew that. You know me better than anyone. It took you ten years to get cold feet?”

 

Len presses his tongue to the back of his teeth silently.

 

“You and I, Snart, remember?” he laughs, harsh and mean and too loud, punctuating with a slam of his palm against the table. “Where are all those promises now?”

 

“I didn’t do this,” Len replies finally, quietly refusing to give Mick the fight that he wants. “It’s over. And I’m done here. Get some help, Mick.”

 

**\--**

 

 ****Somehow, his apartment feels more empty than it did when Mick was supposed to be dead. He notices the ghost of him more now, sees Mick’s fingerprints all over his life more clearly than he had. Every time he walks in the door, there’s the distinct feeling that he’s forgotten something and it takes him a moment to realize what’s absent.

 

He keeps busy casing his next job, but he’s still months away from any kind of pay off to satisfy him, and the work feels tedious. For the first time in his life, his meticulous preparation and research feels like overkill.

 

From where he’s hunched over the table, tracing getaway routes on a map, Len can hear his personal phone buzzing in the livingroom. It’s a familiar tone, one he’s been hearing a lot lately, a musical little ring that Lisa set for her own contact, and he sighs. Len pauses in his work, pressing his palms to the back of his eyelids and waiting for silence.

 

\--

 

The bike stops working.

 

There’s no death sputter, and nothing lately indicated there was anything wrong. One day he tries to start it up and it simply fails to purr.

 

“Damnit.”

 

He struggles with it briefly -- changes the oil, adjusts some things, before realizing he has no idea what he’s doing and is more likely to make it worse. It’s a petty thing to be upset about, insignificant in the grand scheme of things. He’s lucky that it’s not in a time that he needs it desperately -- he’s still a few months away from requiring a getaway, there’s ample time to get it repaired before then, and yet.

 

Sitting in the empty safehouse, turning the key on a machine that won’t start and that he doesn’t have the first idea how to repair himself...

 

The loneliness that’s been scratching at the pit of his stomach feels a lot like it’s climbing right up his throat.

 

“Kind of seems like a sign, doesn’t it?” says Lisa when he tells her. Her tone is idle as she stirs the straw in her iced coffee, glancing up at him from the table. Len scoffs, pacing around her kitchen and debating whether or not to find a mechanic. It’s a custom thing -- he doesn’t even know if all of the parts go with it. When it needed tuning up before, Mick was always more than willing to help.

 

“I should have paid attention to how he did it,” he mutters, displeased by her tone. It was a ritual, though, so there’d been no reason to take notes. It had meant something.

 

It seems wrong to let someone else get their hands all over it.

 

“No one to fix your bike, no one to drive you around. You’ve been in a bad mood for the past year.” Lisa hums. “Why honey, it’s almost like you need someone.”

 

Len grits his teeth, tsk’s unpleasantly which he knows only serves to prove her right. There’s an old phonebook, its front cover crumpled out of shape, tucked away in one of Lisa’s spare kitchen drawers. He retrieves it now, fingers flipping quickly through thin pages to try and find the _M_ section in the yellowpages.

 

“You didn’t see him like that,” he mutters, although he doesn’t look up at her. “He’s not well. You know I can’t work like that.”

 

“You knew exactly who that guy was as soon as you met him, the same way you always do” she points out, her tone less playful now, irritation creeping into it. Her mouth is turned down in a tight frown when he glances towards her. “You had a read on him from the start. He’s never been ‘ _well’_.” Sharp gold nails tap at the air, imaginary quotation marks around that word, and Len can’t help feeling scolded.

 

“Worse than that --” he says defensively, but his stomach is turning. She’s right and he knows it. The memory of Mick, burned up to the neck and obviously waiting for Len to retrieve him keeps coming back -- the knowledge that he doesn’t know what those scars would feel like under his hands if he touched him, that Mick has probably been wondering the same thing.

 

“For god’s sake Len, does it matter?” Lisa snaps. “If you’re really not interested then fine, I’ll let it lie. But all that bullshit about the job or about him being too much to deal with is starting to get old. It’s not about work -- it hasn’t been about work with you and Mick for ten years.”

 

Ten years; it’s been more than that, but to hear it out loud is staggering. Ten years ago, Len realizes, Lisa was a teenager. Mick has been a warm fixture, a presence at his side, for more than a third of his life.

 

“You can’t change his nature.”

 

There’s a voicemail on his personal phone when he leaves her apartment. Mick’s gruff voice, too distant on the recording, telling the empty air about a therapy appointment he has scheduled a week later.

 

Len listens to it all the way through, then hits #4 on the keypad to replay it. He listens to it twice more on the way home.

 

**\--**

 

****_The Streak._

 

It’s a stupid name but the kid seems young, surely he’ll land on something better. Len assumes he’s a kid -- superpowers or not, he has that air about him and voice distortion can only do so much. That amuses him more than it annoys him; he’s not too proud to admit when he’s been bested, even if it is by someone who’s likely half his age.

 

It’s been a long time since he didn’t come out on top; the challenge is welcome, rather than resented. It gives him something to focus his energy on, a reason to up his game and start thinking on his feet. The relentless grind of prep and execution has been getting tiresome, like a sliver under his skin that isn’t quite painful but a constant irritant.

 

This one kid, in his flashy red suit, is only the beginning. The world is moving and changing under Len’s feet, and he’s been around long enough to see what happens to people who dig their heels in and try to take root rather than adapt. He’d hate to be one of them; a stubborn old man stuck in the days of old world mob etiquette, sitting behind a heavy desk watching everything he’s worked for crumble away.

 

He’s always been happier on the field, anyways. If the game has moved into the realm of costumed heroes and superpowers, there are ways to sink his teeth in.

 

The jacket isn’t red leather, but paired with the gun it’ll do for an image. The deep, cold blue is a welcome change to the blacks and greys he usually wears on the job but not so out of his realm of comfort that it’s out of place on his shoulders. It feels like coming home when he slips it on, like going back to his roots. It reminds him of the sharp, clean smell of chlorine at the rec center, or of the ice van his grandfather drove before he died. There’s something fitting in that, and Len can’t help the grin that pulls at the corners of his mouth when he slips the gun into the holster at his thigh.

 

Another gun, the perfect opposite, sits untouched in a steel box in his safe. The symmetry hasn’t escaped him, and the fact that he knows someone who’d jump at the chance to get in on it looms. Fire and ice; it’s an attractive concept and it would fit so easily.

 

\--

 

He brings the key for the bike with him while he works, tucked into the pocket of his jacket. He runs his fingers over the toothless metal like a talisman, smooth and easily warmed by his touch. It should steady him but it doesn’t; instead he finds himself anticipating something he hasn’t decided on yet. It leaves him more nervous than he’d care to admit, uncharacteristically unsteady and unsure.

 

Still, he keeps it on himself as a nameless reminder: a counter to something cold and lonely that’s been running on a loop in his ear for as long as he can remember.

 

\--

 

 

“So what do you say, Mick. Are you in or are you out?”

 

Mick keeps himself in the shadows of the dark room -- Len can’t see the scars on his body, the peeled pink skin of his hands. It could be intentional, a defense mechanism after what happened last time. Len wouldn’t begrudge him that. The memory of that encounter twists uncomfortably in the back of his mind, and he swallows thickly. It would be well within Mick’s rights to reverse the dynamic and put him on the receiving end of that same rejection.

 

The table between them may as well be a line in the sand; it’s surprisingly free of organized clutter, empty but for the shiny silver lock box Len has set there like an offering.

 

In the midst of everything, the thought that Mick may have stopped working with his hands feels like a gouge in his side. He has to clench his jaw to resist asking about it. Mick examines the gun while Len examines what little he can see of his hands with the lights down; no grease embedded under his fingernails or soot dirtying his knuckles.

 

The silence may only last a beat -- to Len it stretches on for an eternity, waiting to hear Mick’s voice from the darkness. There are other things here that he hasn’t said in so many words that he hopes Mick will hear. He hopes this will be understood for everything that it is.

 

Mick’s chuckle crackles like wood in a fireplace, deep and warm and familiar.

 

“Yeah buddy,” Len can hear the smile in his voice. “I’m in.”

 

The box shuts with a snap when Len puts his hand on the top, all pretense of this being strictly a business transaction gone. Mick seems unsure of what to do with himself -- unsure of how to read Len. He lights another match, dragging it to life on the edge of the table and holding it underneath his hand to feel the heat. The flame doesn’t quite catch the skin but it licks dangerously at his palm. The nervous tic reminds Len of a younger man with dark hair and a zippo tucked away in his front pocket, and when their eyes meet he feels the same rush he felt then.

 

“Not that you deserve it,” Mick grunts, not quite an afterthought, his brow creasing. “But it looks like I’m the only one crazy enough to go along with any of your stunts. I don’t exactly see anyone else lining up.”

 

“Mick,” he starts, stepping around the table to place his hand on Mick’s wrist. There’s half a second where Mick holds onto that soreness, unwilling to comply right away. “I know.” Len concedes quietly, and that seems to be enough. Mick’s hand moves away from the flame and his fingers drop the match to scuff it out under his boot.

 

“Didn’t know if you’d come back,” Mick says, watching him. His arm is warm under Len’s touch.

 

“I wasn’t sure if you’d take me,” Len admits.

 

The grin he gets in response is unexpectedly quick; it pulls Mick’s cheeks up and crinkles his eyes. It warms Len right to his core even if his own expression can’t quite match its size. He doesn’t startle when Mick curls his hand around the back of his neck, rubbing fingers against the soft spot at the base of his skull in a careful, vaguely possessive gesture. He he does lean into him, though, his breath catching imperceptibly in his chest.

 

“I’ll take you,” Mick says. “Partner.”

 

When Len kisses him, he knows that Mick can taste the promise behind his teeth.

 

 

 


End file.
